


this guilt-ridden heart

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (somehow forgot to tag angst, Angst, Brothers, Dysfunctional Family, Exile, Gen, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, Treason, in this house we don't excuse treason but we do understand the impulse, leaving your family's religious fanaticism is good actually, that's a testament to my personal angst levels that this didn't immediately qualify)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: Verin receives a message from his mother that drags him back into a familiar prison—and perhaps out of one.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss & Verin Thelyss
Comments: 11
Kudos: 179





	this guilt-ridden heart

**Author's Note:**

> I'm constantly intrigued by this relationship and Matthew Mercer has not explained it so I will create it myself.

He’s writing up a report on reckless behavior exhibited by two of his men inside the mountain when he gets the message. He’s thinking about the way his father died there the same way when he gets the message. He’s picturing the ashen hue of his brother’s face the day they got the news when he gets the message.

“ _You need to come home now. It’s your brother._ ”

His mother sounds like she’s been crying. He knows those tears from the night his father died. It’s the only time he’s heard her cry, but the sound of it has never left him, and he shudders to think what’s happened now.

Verin stands and runs to find a mage, leaving the ink on his quill to soak into the paper.

—

They don’t let him see his brother for a long time. 

He considers, for the first time ever, intentionally breaking the law. He could make it into the Dungeon of Penance in ten minutes, get to Essek in another seven. He’s been through there enough times in prisoner transport to know where he’d be kept—down on the darkest floor, in a place lightless enough to pale even the most reclusive drow, and Essek is certainly up there. The number of times Verin has seen him outside the Lucid Bastion in the last decade is probably fewer than he could count on his hands. 

But his mother has been in a state since he arrived, and he can’t exactly have her losing a second son to the law of the Dynasty. 

He thinks if Essek could see her, maybe he’d find the magic to turn back time and reverse what he’s supposed to have done.

Verin starts to spend more time in the Lucid Bastion, away from her grief, where he can keep abreast of the proceedings and interrogations and away from her gut wrenching sobs.

—

“Have they sent you in here to interrogate me?”

The grin is all he can see, skewed to one side, his lip split and bruised and his hair matted from dirt and blood. Essek’s always been a thin elf, but without his cloak and his mantle he is skeletal, and Verin almost turns to run on the spot. He imagines he’s already talking to a ghost, and he may join his mother in her grief this evening when he leaves this dark hellhole where he is certain his brother will die.

“Have they locked you in here to confess?”

Essek sits back on the hard chair he is chained too, tossing the hair that has grown long and ragged out of his face. His eyes have more life than the rest of his body, and at least that much has not changed.

Verin takes a tentative seat on the ground as the guards close the bars behind him. He is locked in this cell for the time being, with his brother and every sin either of them have never confessed. 

“ _Why?_ ”

Essek shrugs, tugging at the chains. They rattle against the movement. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve always been a fucking bastard.”

“As have you.”

Verin leans back on his hands, sprawled out across the hard stone floor, and closes his eyes, imagining they are in the grass of the Thelyss manor, in days before the war and their stations and this fucking situation—

“Essek, tell me. Tell me it’s not true.”

Essek cocks his head and stares for a long moment, and he reminds himself that his brother is as good as dead.

“Have you seen the Mighty Nein?” Essek asks finally, dropping his eye, and tossing his head back again out of necessity when his hair falls again. Verin wants to stand and comb it out of his eyes, pull the dried blood from the white strands with his fingers, but he imagines his brother will recoil from his touch. It’s not so much that he’s never like to be touched; it’s that touch like that feels like a kind of vulnerability, and he is already so small and vulnerable here. They both know it, and they are both well aware that Essek will not take kindly to that show of affection. 

He has to rack his brain for the name. “Those mercenaries who came through Bazzoxan months ago?”

Essek laughs. “Yes.”

The pit in his stomach is not jealousy. “I haven’t. Why?”

Essek’s eye flit over the guards almost imperceptibly. “I need to get them a message.”

Verin wants to scream at him, but they’ve been well trained in restraint, and the guards are still listening. If they’re listening, of course—but this is the biggest scandal in the Dynasty in well over a century. Of course they’re listening. “What could you possibly want to tell them? You cannot think them capable of saving you.”

That would take a miracle, he thinks.

“No, no,” Essek exhales. “I would simply like them to know of my, ah, situation.”

“Situation—“ Verin spits, before catching himself. He stands and paces across the room. “You are on trial for _treason_ , Essek, for fuck’s sake—“

“Yes.”

“Mother has barely eaten a thing since I’ve returned.”

“Funny. Neither have I.”

Verin briefly considers punching the wall, but it’ll be a poor stand-in for his brother’s face, and he can’t bring himself to add another bruise.

“Why do you want them to know?” he asks once he’s stopped pacing, settling back on his boots and crossing his arms. 

“They are— were,” he catches himself with a dark chuckle that rumbles even in his thin chest, “my friends. And it may be selfish of me but… I would like them to know. At least to know what came of me.”

This time the heel of Verin’s hand finds the stone wall, stinging against his skin, as much to steady himself as it is to release his anger, but this time it is anger at all of the forces that have created the thing in front of him—a bloody traitor chained to the ground.

“By the _light_ , it’s not selfish to have friends, Essek.”

The curl of his lip reveals one sharp fang, and Verin wonders if his brother has always been as much of a blunt blade as he is right now. “Isn’t it?”

—

After a day of stewing in what is absolutely not jealousy that simmers in his stomach, he asks around. He doesn’t dare talk to his mother about these mysterious friends of her son’s, but eventually Quana pulls him aside.

“You were asking around about the Mighty Nein?” she asks, and he swallows down his nerves at being addressed by the Dusk Captain, with her kind gaze that could pierce the Divine Gate, and nods.

“I’m trying to learn more about what my brother was up to, lately. Did he seem…” he feels like this is the question everyone asks when their relative commits a horrible crime, but it feels apt. “Did he seem any different, recently?”

“He seemed… happier, oddly enough. I don’t think many people noticed, but I see everything,” she smiles, and taps her nose, and it would feel like a funny inside joke but there is nothing funny about this. “He worked a little less. It helped him, I think.”

It’s hard to forget, standing next to her, how many lifetimes Quana has lived. Her grip on his shoulder is as kind as her eyes, and tears nearly well to his eyes. He ducks his head, feeling like a child, but he has to ask. “Do you really think he did it?”

She sighs deeply. “I think so. I’m very sorry.”

Yes, he certainly does feel like a child, like a child made to cry by an older sibling, being patched up a caring aunt. 

“I would like to get in touch with this Mighty Nein, if we have the means,” he says finally, stifling the tears that threaten to spill. “I would like to speak with them, if they will agree to it.”

Quana squeezes his shoulder. “I can make that happen.”

—

Verin Thelyss does not believe in the Luxon.

He knows what it is capable of, of course. He’s seen enough of its magic with his own eyes. But he cannot say where its power comes from, cannot reconcile its dominion with the domains of the gods that have left their nation in ruin before their people even reached the surface, blinding their eyes against the light of the sun.

If the Luxon is light, is a god meant to hurt that much?

—

He gets the message that evening, from a voice he doesn’t recognize. It’s deadly serious, and he wonders who this woman is who would spend magic to speak to him on his brother’s behalf. “ _Verin, we got your message. We can meet you at our house in one hour. Come soon, please._ ” Then, after a split second: “ _We didn’t know Essek has a brother._ ”

He gives an affirmation, and doesn’t say what he’s thinking. _I didn’t know my brother had friends._

He knows what house they mean, an old den property that had been vacated since its occupants had moved to Asarius. The tree grows taller than most of the Rosohna skyline, its ever present lights glowing in the eternal darkness, and he follows them like a beacon.

When he knocks, the door opens almost immediately as though they’ve been waiting for him, though no one seems to have let him in. There are six of them, sitting and standing in tense silence in the foyer, and the last beats of whatever conversation they’ve dropped at his arrival still hang in the air.

“Good evening,” he says stiffly, and bows his head slightly. He feels like a stranger in his own city as he enters their midst. “I am Verin Thelyss. You… must be the Mighty Nein.”

A blue tiefling, shorter than he is, sits against a wall with her knees drawn to her chest and sniffles. Her eyes are tinged with a purple that makes him think she has just hastily wiped away tears. “Have you… have you seen him?”

Her voice is the one he heard in his head. He peers around at the rest of the group—a woman in some kind of monk vestments sits on the second to last step of the staircase, her face in one hand and her elbows on her knees. Beside her, another woman who looks like she could snap Verin in half fidgets with a flower, not meeting his eyes. Across from them, a halfling in yellow overalls grips the hand of a red-haired man whose eyes are lidded with exhaustion, and a half-orc glowers where he stands beside the tiefling, leaning against the wall.

A firbolg enters from the kitchen holding a tray full of teacups. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation in the study?”

He passes between them and down the hall, leaving no room for disagreement, and Verin follows him. The others follow as well, with varying speed, and finally he finds himself beside the tiefling, folded somewhat neatly into the corner of a couch. 

“I was only allowed to see him yesterday,” Verin says finally, once introductions have been hastily made and tea has been distributed. “He is…” He laughs, in spite of himself, in spite of the watery and stony expressions around him. “He’s still enough of a bastard that I think he’s alright for the time being.”

Beau snorts. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Is he… How did he…” Of all of them, Jester seems the most distraught; he wonders how many tears she has shed today, and wonders yet again how this motley crew of people have attracted his brother’s friendship. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“I don’t know what evidence they have against him, nor how they came across it. But if it is damning, he will be executed.”

“But he’s… he’s consecuted, right? He’ll come back?” she asks, with too much hope in her wet eyes, and his brow furrows. 

“No, no, he’s not consecuted.” The wheels spin in his head as Jester gasps, pressing her hands to her mouth, and out of sight, the others share glances too quick to interpret. “Even if he was, they carry out the execution of consecuted persons outside the range of a beacon.”

Fjord, on her other side, hums briefly, his own face pinched. “He told us he was consecuted. When we first met him—I asked—“

“He’s a liar, Fjord,” Beau exhales. “We already knew that.”

“Why would he lie about that?” Jester cries, glaring at them both. “Did he think we would care that he wasn’t—“

“I think he did not know us,” Caleb murmurs, in an accent that Verin isn’t familiar with. It’s the first time he’s spoken, and his voice is weak. “He… he did not trust us.”

“But why not correct himself?” Beau snaps. “Why just leave the lie there?”

“You have never let someone you cared about believe that you are better than you are, Beauregard?” His eyes flit briefly to Verin—no, maybe to Jester, and Verin wonders what he is letting his friends believe. 

“It is strange,” Verin says, almost involuntarily, but that angry coiled snake of envy in his stomach is unraveling, and as much as he does not want to show it, he cannot bring himself to control it. “It is strange, thinking of Essek caring about anyone.”

But then he remembers the day they were told their father had died, and Essek’s face going pale, and the way he had disappeared for three days before anyone had seen him again. It is not unusual for him to hole away now, but then Verin had scarcely spent a day without his overbearing presence. 

Part of the rage of this thing in him rears its head at the memory of how relieved he’d been at the time, not to see his brother for a while. At how much it had felt like a reprieve.

He cannot fault this strange group for connecting with his brother on a level he was never able, not when he spent plenty of time wishing for an end to Essek’s presence. It was mutual, at the time, and they spent many days making each other miserable, but… now it just hurts to think about.

He can’t ask them. He can’t ask how they won Essek over, can’t ask how they did what he’d never been able to do. Instead he clears his throat in the uncomfortable silence and changes the subject. “You were working with him?”

“Yes, we, ah, did some work for him, mercenary things.” Caleb sips his tea, not meeting his eyes.

“Yes, I heard that you had come through Bazzoxan.”

“You are in Bazzoxan?” Yasha asks, and he nods. “We did not see you.”

“No, I believe I was on patrol the day you arrived.” He doesn’t add that he had been told that friends of his brothers were in town, heading into the King’s Cage, and he dismissed it and went to pass out for twelve hours. _My brother doesn’t have friends_ , he’d thought at the time. _Certainly not friends willing to march into the belly of this beast._

It’s the kind of thing that makes him ache with regret, though nothing he could’ve done then would change where they sit now.

Finally, he leans forward, looking around at all of them. He imagines how he looks—a relative of a man who has lied to them as much as he cares for them, pleading for… something. Even Verin doesn’t know why he’s come here, really. 

Perhaps he just wants to understand.

“Did he do what they say he did?” he asks, reading their faces even as they answer with stony silence. “Did he tell you?”

“Why would he tell us such a thing?” Caleb asks, measured, and Verin doesn’t quite believe it but he doesn’t think anyone will give him much more of an answer. “That is dangerous information for outsiders such as ourselves to have.”

“It is dangerous information for anyone to have, if what they say is true,” Verin says, and sets down his teacup. It is not from here, he recognizes; a bit chipped and worn. It has likely seen more than he has. “I’m sorry, I should not have come. I don’t know what I thought to achieve by asking to speak with you.”

“No—“ Jester says, gripping his sleeve as he moves to stand. “Please, we…”

“He’s right, Jester,” Fjord says. “There is not much else to say, is there?”

“Is there anything you can do?” Jester asks, and Verin stifles a laugh. He would like to ask them the same thing, but he knows the answer.

“No, no,” he says. “I don’t imagine there is much that anyone can do.”

He has heard that they delivered a beacon for their own survival, another for the lives of countless endangered by the war. There are no other beacons to hand over in exchange for his brother’s life, and he imagines that is the least of what it would take. 

“It would take a miracle,” he says, thinking of his conversation with Essek in the prison, “and I am not one for miracles.”

“Much like your brother, in that way,” Caleb comments. He wonders what is behind that expression impassive as stone, that he alone among anyone in the Dynasty can identify perhaps the only thing the Thelyss brothers have in common.

“Well, you may be in luck,” Caduceus says. “You’re not one for miracles. Fortunately, we might be.”

—

In spite of the firbolg’s comment, Verin does not allow himself to hope. He has never put much stock—much faith—in clerics. They are handy in some situations, but he has found that they believe their power more extensive than the politics of the world allow.

What miracles can the pantheon perform from beyond the Divine Gate anyway?

So his mouth dries when his mother sweeps into the sitting room over a week later. He’s reading an old book, something Essek had ripped through and then discarded, leaving it behind in the manor when he left. Essek had been capricious those days, devouring information on topics well beyond his field of study and promptly moving to something wildly different, all scientific and imaginative and _miraculous_. 

This one speaks of things in the elemental planes that Verin hopes he never has to encounter—the Abyss is one plane enough to fight.

He’s been reading a lot of these old books lately, while he’s on leave; he has very little hope that it may give him some kind of window into his brother’s mind, but there is little else to do but try.

Mother doesn’t speak as she clasps her hands to her gaping mouth, her eyes wide, and then covers her face and lets out a shaky breath as though steadying herself. This house feels so empty with just the two of them, and he thinks of his mother alone here. He wonders if she talks to herself, like he does in the mornings in Bazzoxan.

He has seen his brother’s towers, though he has still never visited. He wonders if it’s been picked over for the investigation. 

He wonders if all three of them have been talking to themselves instead of each other since his father died, ignoring the growing divides between them even as they make pleasant small talk at den dinners.

“Mother, what is it?” he asks slowly, and takes a tentative step forward. As he draws nearer he can see that she’s actually trembling, and he pulls her hands away from her face to clasp them in his. “What’s wrong?”

“Those… those mercenaries,” she says, and his heart leaps to his throat, “they… they arrived in court today, with another beacon.”

Between the shake in her voice and the way his heart is pounding, he’s not sure he heard her correctly. He has to shake his head like there’s water in his ears before he processes what she’s just said. “A beacon. Was a third missing?”

“No, no,” she shudders, and he puts his hands on her shoulders. It steadies her enough that her breathing calms some. Even when his father died, he’s never seen her so… shaken. Grief and shock are different reactions. “They’ve found another. I don’t know where but—“

“Did they give it to the queen?” he asks, and she meets his gaze finally.

“They want to trade it.” She swallows, steeling herself. “For Essek.”

—

“Foolish,” Essek laughs, when Verin tells him. He is still in the dark, still chained by all limbs, still so small in this cell. “They should’ve kept it for themselves. I’ve nowhere to go but down, anyway.” His gaze pierces Verin, and he thinks that should mean something to him, with the significance in the way Essek looks at him, but he only shakes his head and sighs and turns to leave.

Verin knows his brother’s reverence for the things, even in lieu of belief, but it has always felt like a hollow reminder that Essek has never felt that the power he himself contains is adequate.

—

It is exile, in the end. His spell books are burned, his den name is revoked, and he is told to never set foot within the borders of the Kryn Dynasty again. 

Only when his books are burned in the middle of the throne room does he grimace, and even then it is so imperceptible that perhaps only Verin catches it. The Mighty Nein stand at his back, where they are little more than shadows waiting to escort him beyond their borders, and Verin still thinks this is little more than a delayed death sentence, but it certainly is a miracle.

His mother thinks it a great victory. They have gained a new beacon. They have spared her son’s life. She has always thrived on hope for a better tomorrow, and Verin does not correct her as the wizard—Caleb—takes the minute to draw out a teleportation circle on the ground beneath the eyes of the entire Kryn court.

Essek meets his eyes for a moment, his face sunken and grey and almost skeletal from the time he has spent in the darkest reaches of the dungeon, gives him the slightest hint of a grin, and then vanishes into the light of the circle and slips out of Verin’s hands.

—

He spends a lot of time on leave. 

He tells the Bazzoxan guard and the Dusk Captain that it’s to support his mother, but he sees Quana’s pitying eyes as she pats him on the shoulder and says, “Take all the time you need.” While he’s glad that Essek has not been executed, he continues to dwell on the outcome of the trial, even as negotiation of the placement of this new beacon and any new research that might come of another piece of their god wages like a war in itself in the throne room, and his mother spends so much time in court that he takes the opportunity to begin to sift through all of the contents of his brother’s towers, which have been relinquished back to the den.

If he thought the number of books Essek left in the manor was large, he was unprepared for the extensiveness of his brother’s library. He skims through books, searching some kind of explanation. All of the research that he assumes Essek must’ve had has been confiscated, and he finds himself sitting crosslegged on the tower walkways peering over Rosohna, a book in one hand, the other steadying himself over the dizzying drop. He wonders what passersby think, members of other dens, his own den, who know what this place is and what he’s doing here.

He imagines they pity him. It’s the reason he hasn’t been out much lately.

Verin has always been scared enough of heights to fail to understand his brother’s obsession with them, but he forces himself day after day to sit at his vantage point and try to understand Essek’s decisions.

It does not make throwing away his life’s work—hell, throwing away his _life_ —by committing treason anymore comprehensible to him, but gradually he starts to enjoy his place in the sky. He can see the lights that are still glowing on the tree atop that vacant house, and he wonders if the Mighty Nein will ever return to their gifted house. No upstanding member of the Firmaments would wish to live there, but there is enough reverence for this group that has single-handedly returned not one but three beacons to the Dynasty that no one has yet suggested they tear the tree down.

It is close enough that Verin can see the pink and green of the mushrooms growing happily at its base, at home in the dark and the damp of the city.

He understands, for the first time, why his brother was so used to it up here. No negotiating the complicated looks that other residents of the district have greeted both of them with since they grew past a point where anamnesis was still possible, no reason to hold their shoulders in perfect posture and their heads high. 

Verin chased their father into the depths of hell to escape all of it, and Essek…

Essek tried to ascend.

It’s funny for him to think, but Essek has always wrestled with their mother’s god much more than he has, looking for ways to reconcile it with his own arcane beliefs. Sometimes when he spends too long staring into the skyline he imagines his brother’s sunken eyes, the last words he spoke to Verin before his exile.

“ _I’ve nowhere to go but down, anyway._ ”

He leans back on his hands and exhales, and asks the sky questions he would ask of his brother, if he was here. “What kind of martyr did you think you could become?”

—

He ends up being promoted, oddly enough. He thinks they might want to keep an eye on him, keep him near the Lucid Bastion. Maybe it was just that Adeen Tasithar’s position has been vacant for some time. Maybe it was that his mother was worried about how much time he’d spent in Essek’s towers lately, pouring over his books and trying to understand the brother that is now out of his reach.

Maybe it’s because finally he just moves in to a traitor’s home, surrounded by all of Essek’s books and furniture and sparse decorations.

He finds a pink parasol in the bedroom, the first night he spends there. After tossing the room that he’d left alone in favor of examining the library and laboratories, he finds a hidden panel, and nothing behind it but this strange trinket of a thing. 

He sits against the wall and twirls it, open, between his palms, wondering where his brother might’ve gotten something like this. 

Funny. It’s the same color as a ribbon that little tiefling wore around one of her horns.

—

It’s almost ironic, how much reading he’s done since he was told his older brother was being tried for treason. They’d never gotten along because Essek spent all of his time reading and studying and working, and Verin had very easily gotten bored with it. 

Turns out all he needed was a reason to want to understand his brother, and suddenly the studying is interesting to him.

When his mother finds out what he’s been reading, over dinner one night, she looks, surprisingly, delighted. 

“I’m so glad you’ve taken an interest in our religion,” she says, reaching across the table to squeeze the hand that isn’t holding a spoonful of soup, and he swallows down a retort and nods, smiling pleasantly, feeling more and more like his traitor exile brother with every conversation he has.

—

It’s not living in his brother’s house, reading his books, finally comprehending all of the things he’d felt too stupid compared to Essek to learn as a child. It’s this city, the way the belief bleeds into the architecture and reminds him that he’s alone here. It is remembering the casual feeling of Bazzoxan, the way none of his men would’ve ever mentioned the Luxon. 

Not one of the men in his battalion would’ve ended a conversation with “Light be with you,” but he finds the parting words falling easily from his lips, returning to the polite habits of his childhood.

It’s jarring when he actually stops and thinks about it, caught in his tracks on his way out of the Lucid Bastion, the words still bouncing around his head, and he hurries home before anyone can ask him what’s wrong.

And still it doesn’t feel like his—it is a wizard’s tower, through and through, and no matter how many books he reads he does not have the patience for wizardry, for hours pouring over runes and spell pages. 

But still, he finds secrets there, secrets that only he would know to look for, from all of the years spent in their parents’ house. Verin has no idea if they were left there like breadcrumbs, pages of research tucked into strange crevices and hidden compartments, or if they were simply hidden for Essek’s use. Verin is starting to realize that for all of their differences, they think very much alike. Many of these hiding places have been left untouched only because no one but the two of them would think to look.

He compiles them into notebooks, taking his own notes on the research, and some of them make note of research tucked into other places. It starts to feel like his free time has been a scavenger hunt, the prize some kind of insight into his brother’s choices, but if that’s the case, Verin already understands Essek—by the time he thinks he can imagine treason, now that he’s returned to this culture that he ran to hell to hide from, he has been working in the Lucid Bastion for over a year.

It is about this time that he finds a paper that he dwells on for long enough that he realizes he’s still awake when he should’ve climbed out of bed for work. 

It has three circles of somewhat variable size, connected by lines, and a few runes scrawled in between. There is an line that bisects one of the connectors, more of an x in an equation than another line, and he draws this image over and over on sheets of paper until he wonders if he’s crafting a spell. 

When he knows he’s late for work, he leaves it behind, and attends to the day’s duties with a hastily thrown on clean set of clothing. 

It’s only when he returns home, following the point of the highest of the three towers, that it hits him, and he stumbles up the steps two at a time to the walkway that he knows is indicated by this map that his brother has… perhaps left him? Or left himself?

He crouches at the place indicated and searches the gleaming grey stone. This high there is no light for it to reflect, but still it shines, and his fingers move along the rough surface until they find something deliberate, something… carved.

When he presses his nose close to it, he frowns. 

It’s the abyssal word for _down_.

On either side of it are two circles, and he thinks of the two runes—he returns to the laboratory and finds fine chalk, the kind that he imagines might be used for something like this.

His heart pounds in his chest as he carefully and deliberately sketches out the runes in the circles. It takes him a few minutes, not wanting to make any mistakes, and when he sits back on his heels, he is disappointed. Nothing happens.

The chalk glares up at him, stark white against the grey, and finally he sighs, and gathers the accent that he hasn’t had a use for since he left Bazzoxan. In fact, no one in Rosohna would have use to learn it, except someone who’d been stationed in Bazzoxan. In abyssal, he murmurs, “ _Down._ ”

Something makes a _schick_ in the stone, and then the whoosh of something falling.

When he peers over the edge, a small book is dropping through the air toward the yard below.

He exhales, his breath catching in his throat. Then he mutters, also in abyssal, “ _Fuck._ ”

—

It’s a fucking copy of that bastard’s spellbook, hidden where only Verin would think to find it.

He laughs genuinely for the first time in months as he rifles through it, recognizing the looping handwriting. “Nowhere to go but down indeed. _Asshole_ ,” he mutters, and turns back into the towers to hide it away.

—

Two weeks later he slips into a conversation with a Luxon cleric that he has a report on some unresolved issues with the war and needs to contact the Mighty Nein. The cleric frowns at him for a moment, but pats him on the arm and says she’ll see what she can do.

—

He’s never heard this voice so chipper, though it feels far more right than the stark message he received two years ago. 

“ _Verin! A cuhhh-leric sent us your message. When would you like to meet? What do you want to talk about? Uhhh…_ ” She trails off for a moment, and he almost responds, before he gets, “ _You got any pastries?_ ”

He thinks woefully of his understocked kitchen—yet another thing he and his brother have in common. “I can pick some up on my way home. Can you meet me at, ah, my brother’s home in two hours?”

It’s arranged with very little words, and by the time the Mighty Nein have arrived on his doorstep, he has acquired pastries that are hopefully suitable for Jester Lavorre and collected all of his discoveries into a pile on a sitting room table.

It is, of course, outlandish to imagine his brother will be with them, and when he ushers them in, there are seven of them, in clothes that are much better suited to a coastal climate. 

“Where is he?” is the first thing he asks, his voice choked with emotion that he’s locked away for two years, and it is astounding how much like Essek he’s become even in this short time. Astounding how easy it is to release in front of this group. 

“He said you might’ve wanted to see him,” Caleb says, holding out a hand. “We can take you to him, if you want.”

Verin eyes the offered hand, then turns back to the table to collect the papers and book before he takes it. “Yes. Take me to him.”

—

The light in Port Damali is blinding like nothing he has ever known, and he knows suddenly that there are many gods here and simultaneously none at all.

The sounds of a marketplace and the scent of stalls of spices and foods and the ocean above it all overwhelm him beneath the sharp sting of his eyes, and they shuffle him quickly through a door into a dimly lit stairwell. “He’s upstairs,” Beau says, clapping him unceremoniously on the shoulder—as though he himself is not committing some criminal act just by being here. 

There are no guidelines for whether or not a member of the Kryn court can travel to visit an exiled criminal, as exile is not generally the Bright Queen’s choice of punishment, but Verin does not think any of this superiors would be pleased to know of his whereabouts.

He swallows hard and takes the steps slowly, one at a time, as the Nein turn one by one to leave the cramped landing back into the bright Port Damali market.

When he knocks on the door, it opens without a pause, and he shakes his head as he enters a space much larger than the stairwell would suggest.

“Oh, you fucking bastard,” he scoffs, and his brother closes his book with a smirk to mirror his own, looking far healthier than the last time Verin saw him. 

“It’s good to see you too,” Essek says with a twisted grin. “I was afraid you might not have found it.” He gestures to an armchair—though it is still not large, the flat is far warmer than the minimalist towers Verin has been occupying for over a year, and part of him yearns to stay. This is a far warmer version of his brother than he has ever known, and he thinks of how cold he himself became in the Lucid Bastion. 

“Yes, well, it took me a good long while just to wonder if perhaps I should go to your house.”

He passes the book and papers to Essek, who flips through it with a smile that is softer than anything he’s ever seen on his brother’s face. “Ahh,” he breathes, an exhales that drops his shoulders so much that Verin wonders if it’s tension he’s been carrying since the last time they saw each other. “Thank the luxon,” he drawls, and Verin can’t help but chuckle, caught in the euphoria of this place that feels like a pleasant dream.

“There is some kind of spacial enchantment on this place, no?” he asks, as Essek pours them both a drink from a decanter on his side table and passes him one. It burns his nose before he’s even tasted it, and he laughs again. “ _Bastard_. In exile and you’re still drinking Xhorhasian liquor.”

“Nothing here is _strong_ enough,” Essek snarls, but he looks so pleased with himself, so giddy, that Verin almost stands up and throws his arms around Essek’s shoulders right then. “There is a bit of an enchantment, yes, but nothing so powerful as the things I have in there. I had a few loose scrolls I’d made tucked away when they found me, but I was using my spellbook at the time and…” he scowls briefly, but the grin returns like a passing cloud. “Anyway, how is the Dynasty? How is Mother? 

“Shit, fine,” Verin answers, dropping his head from one side to the other as he answers each question in turn. “They gave me Adeen’s job.”

Essek blinks. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

“And how is the Lucid Bastion, then?”

“God awful. They’re still arguing over what to do with that beacon.” He takes a long minute to sip his drink, smirking around it. “They’re considering doing _research_ on it.”

“Oh, _by the light_ …” Essek mutters, and tosses his own drink back. “Get out of there, Verin. I’m serious.”

Verin feels that old, familiar prickle of jealous bitterness in his stomach and scowls into his glass. “By what, getting myself exiled?”

“By _leaving_ ,” Essek snaps, then softens. He looks almost pained as he sets down his empty glass. “There is nothing for you there.”

“And what would you know of what there is for me? I left a post I enjoyed because _you_ got yourself arrested and _someone_ needed to take care of Mother—“

“Fuck her,” Essek snarls, and it stops Verin in his tracks. This is unlike any conversation they ever had in the Dynasty, where Essek’s rage was tempered by fear and expectation, and it startles him to hear it. More startling, though, is what comes out of his mouth next. “I don’t care about her, Verin, I care far more about you.”

Verin gapes, at a loss for words, and Essek takes the opportunity to keep talking.

“We didn’t care about each other in Rosohna,” he scowls, waving a hand. “For a century we only cared about, ah, _stations_ and duties and whatever other shit the den fed us. Imagine if we’d been able to grow up somewhere…” He hisses through his teeth, and shakes his head. “Somewhere that cared about who we are, not what we might become.”

“You really have no remorse, do you?” Verin laughs, but it’s dark and bitter and both of them purse their faces in parallel echoes of the small displeasure they were ever allowed to show. 

“I have… I hold guilt. Plenty of guilt. But I cannot imagine a timeline in which I was guided as I was by the den and not made the same choice.”

“I grew up with you and I did not make the same choices you have.”

Essek tucks himself further into his chair, and Verin wonders how much that guilt does in fact border on remorse—not for his choices, perhaps, but a grief for a path that might’ve resulted in a different outcome. His brother has always been obsessed with time, and Verin thinks that perhaps the shockwaves of this choice have exploded in all directions, reverberating back to Essek before he even made his decisions. “And if you were well and truly in my situation? Can you truly tell me you wouldn’t have chosen the same?”

Verin thinks of court days listening to his elders squabble, and distant, fanciful thoughts of snatching their newest beacon out of their smug hands. They have been cropping up recently, only small fantasies, but given enough time… “No. No, I cannot say that.”

They sit in silence for a long minute, Verin sipping what’s left of his drink, before either of them speaks again.

“I think you cared about me, as children. In whatever way you were able,” Verin says. “The way I cared about you to piece together the clues you left for me.”

“Ah, but would you have done that before I was gone?” Essek asks. “I did, in a way. I didn’t have any means to show it, but I did.”

“It was just us, huh? It was us against the rest of them, for a while. Until we realized that ‘against the rest of them’ was not a stance we were entitled to.”

“Speak for yourself,” Essek scoffs.

“Bastard.”

“You know Adeen Tasithar was the one who had you stationed in Bazzoxan?” Verin freezes, and Essek pours himself another drink. “After Father was killed. He certainly didn’t want to do it, and… he thought it’d be funny. The grieving son taking his father’s post.”

“Father didn’t get killed because he was in Bazzoxan.”

Essek’s face clouds for a moment. “I am well aware of that.”

“I enjoyed it there.”

“It was about the principle of the thing.”

“Is that why you framed him?”

With a wave of his hand, Essek drops his head against his chair and lets out a rather noncommittal growl from the back of his throat. “He was already within the clutches of the Angel of Irons cult, albeit unwillingly. He’d committed plenty of sins against the Dynasty as well. And he was a jackass.” He shrugs. “It was… convenient. Two birds with one stone. Besides, I still got my comeuppance.”

“Mother thinks you can be ‘rehabilitated’.” 

“Of course she does. We’ve always been more of projects than children to her.”

“Are there mothers who do not see their children as projects?”

“Yes.”

Verin hopes that’s true, but he hasn’t met any. Still, Essek has been in this strange coastal place since he was expelled from the Dynasty, and maybe parents here are more willing to allow their children the freedom to choose their own paths. “You know what’s funny?” he muses. “All of that talk about throwing off the shackles of Lolth, and I think somehow they are still as narrow-minded as they were then.”

“Now that’s the treasonous talk I like to hear,” Essek chuckles. “You ought to leave on your own terms, before they make that decision for you.”

“Yes, I do believe a second heretic in our family would be made an example of, don’t you think?”

Suddenly, Essek pales, and Verin turns to look around to see if there’s a threat, but no one has entered this strange too big and too small apartment. When he looks back, Essek is frowning at him and leaning forward. “Please. Please promise me you will leave as soon as you can.”

It feels like a prayer, and a plea, and Essek has never asked anything of him that wasn’t a curt demand. Verin sets his empty drink aside and reaches forward to take his brother’s hand. It feels impossible, to promise this, but it also feels like the only way he survives.

The long breath he releases shudders in his chest, and he bows his head. “I promise, but I need you…” he trails off, pursing his lips, exhaling again. They have always had so much trouble asking anything of each other, being in debt, but this is not something Verin can do alone. “I need you to show me. Show me how. I know—“ he cuts Essek off before he can interrupt, “I know you did not do so of your own volition. But I am… struggling to see outside of this.”

“I understand.” Essek nods, squeezes his fingers, and Verin knows he does. “I will. I will be here for you. Just…” He puts his hand on Verin’s shoulder. “I did not see any other path for me, and thought… well, at least in death I could make a difference.” Verin thinks of the time he spent wondering if his brother sought martyrdom, and he is both vindicated and chastened to think that he was right. “Don’t make my mistakes because you are similarly blinded.”

Verin bows his head, and finally laughs. “I fucking hate my job. It is… it’s so cold. I miss almost getting killed by a demon once a week.”

“Yes, far more exciting that way, isn’t it?”

“And what would you know about fighting demons?”

“Far more now than the last time you saw me.”

“You will have to tell me about your adventures since.”

Essek smiles and sits back in his chair. There is so much warmth here with his brother, where Verin never thought he’d find it, and it horrifies him to think how much the last few years have begun to turn his heart to ice. “Perhaps once you can join me on them, hmm?”

Verin nods and closes his eyes, starting to think of all the ways he might resign without breaking his mother’s heart. He knows his father will resurface eventually, that she won’t be alone forever, that she has been occupied so much lately, but still he defaults to protecting her in ways that she was never able to do for him. “Should I bring you your books?” he asks, and Essek looks around—his flat is filled with shelves already. 

“I may be running out of space for books,” he laughs. 

“Perhaps that research will help you to create more,” Verin offers, gesturing toward the stack of papers he has delivered.

“Yes, I think I will need to,” Essek agrees, and Verin knows then that he will leave because his brother has asked it, because he knows he must. His mother has spent so much time trying to save their souls and driving them apart in the process, and here they are outside of her zealous grip, hoping that they can save each other. He knows he can’t blame her—she only thought she was doing what was best. He can acknowledge that and still reject it in favor of warmth. “If I am to have the space to support my brother, I will create it myself.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you thought!


End file.
